User:Glrx

My apologies. Too much else is going on, so I am seldom current on my watchlist and am now running about 4 weeks behind; some articles in my tab list are months behind because I need to examine sources. That has some sad implications. If I make an edit today, that does not mean I'm current on my watchlist. If an article has lots of activity, then I may not look at that article until the activity has stopped for a few days. (I do jump ahead sometimes.) Even if I see some article changes, I may queue them for later handling because I don't have the time to check them now. Unfortunately, the further back they fall, the less likely they will be addressed.

• "I find that hard to believe." — Carol
  "Give me 10 minutes and then check Wikipedia." — Topper, Dilbert, May 8, 2009
• "This place slightly resembles an insane asylum." ― Blake
  "Well, all you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people." ― Alexander Bullock, My Man Godfrey
• "Hey, but a lot can happen over a year. I mean, you could come back next fall as a completely normal person." ― Samantha Baker, Sixteen Candles
• "... your secret is safe with me." ― Rhett Butler, Gone with the Wind
• "To infinity... and beyond!" ― Buzz Lightyear
• "Eternity is a very long time — especially toward the end." ― Woody Allen
• "It is tough to make predictions, especially about the future." — Yogi Berra
• "You got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there." — Yogi Berra
• "You had a leak? You call what's goin' on around here a leak? Boy, the last time there was a leak like this, Noah built hisself a boat." ― James A. Wells, Assistant U.S. Attorney General, Absence of Malice
• "You're gonna need a bigger boat." ― Martin C. Brody, Jaws. When Aaron Sorkin was asked what was the best line ever written, he quoted this one, but the line was an ad lib. I bet Sorkin knew.
  • "I'm an actor." Roy Scheider to Steven Spielberg when Spielberg was complaining he could not find an actor for Brody's part.
  • "Yes, but can she act?" Steven Spielberg to David Brown when Brown suggested casting Chrissie Watkins in Jaws.
• "My faith in the integrity of American advertising is somewhat restored." ― Richard Sherman, Seven Year Itch
• "Tell me, George, if you had to do it all over again, would you still fall in love with yourself?" ― Oscar Levant to Robert Alda as George Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue
• "He looked at foreign affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe." ― Winston Churchill on Neville Chamberlain.
• "You all look very innocent." ― Winston Churchill to Bletchleyites quoted in David Kahn, Seizing the Enigma, p. 185.
• "I don't want any damn fool in this laboratory to save money, I only want him to save time." — Merle Tuve, Director, Applied Physics Laboratory, ca 1942. Rowland & Boyd 1953, page 281; also.
• "No es Canadiense! Todos Canadienses hablan polaco!" ["You're no Canadian! All Canadians speak Polish!"] ― Spanish officer trying to interrogate a Canadian flier in Polish at Miranda de Ebro concentration camp (where Polish refugees who spoke English would claim to be Canadian so they would not be returned to the Nazis). The flier was classified as stateless. Enigma, Władyshaw Kozaczuk translated by Christopher Kasparek, University Publications of America 1984, pp 152–154
• 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ⋯ = −⁠1/12⁠ — Srinivasa Ramanujan Not only is the sum of all positive integers a fraction less than 1, but it is also a negative fraction.
• Let N be the largest integer. If N > 1, then N² > N, contradicting the definition of N. Hence N = 1. ― Oskar Perron
• All angles are right angles. All triangles are equilateral triangles. ― David Hilbert
• "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is." — Anon
• "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." — possibly Maurice Switzer but often attributied to Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln See Quote Investigator.
• "I stopped her right there and said look, if The Economist says that, then they are wrong. I said that people should come to this article and look at the table where we have a meticulous table with exact reference to the authoritative data." — Jimbo Wales in a thank you note at Talk:Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa.
• "I could see our escort fighters weaving in their protective pattern... our bomber pilots also sighted the enemy force and, without orders, raced for low altitude. ... Even as we pulled out above the jungle, our escort fighters turned into the attacking planes.... For a few moments I lost sight of Yamamoto's plane and finally located the Betty far to the right. I was horrified to see the airplane flying slowly just above the jungle, headed to the south, with bright orange flames rapidly enveloping the wings and fuselage. ... I stared hopelessly as a silver H-shaped P-38 half-rolled in a screaming zoom, then turned steeply, and closed rapidly toward our plane. ... I watched the P-38's nose seem to burst into twinkling flame, and suddenly the bomber shook from the impact of the enemy's machine gun bullets and cannon shells. The P-38 pilot was an excellent gunner, for his first fusilade of bullets and shells crashed into the right side of the airplane, then into the left. The drumming sounds vibrated through the airplane which rocked from the impact of the enemy fire. ... One by one our answering machine guns fell silent. ... Another canon shell suddenly tore open the right wing. ... a Zero pilot above us ... reported heavy smoke pouring from our bomber ... the pilot ... could no longer control the aircraft. Enemy bullets had shattered the cables. ... The impact of the crash momentarily stunned me, and everything turned black." — Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki, Chief of Staff of the Combined Fleet, describing 18 April 1943 attack over Bougainville Island, quoted in Attack on Yamamoto, Carroll V. Glines, New York: Orion Books, 1990, ISBN 0-517-57728-3, pp 99-101.
• "I can't tell if you're a brilliant leader or criminally insane." — Dilbert
  "I'd show you the Venn diagram they gave us in CEO school, but it just looks like a circle." — The C.E.O., Dilbert, February 15, 2015
• "Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience." — George Carlin Also possibly Greg King. Attributed to Mark Twain but word usage slightly off. Similar to "When arguing with fools, don't answer their foolish arguments, or you will become as foolish as they are." — Proverbs 26:4
• "Have you ever noticed when you're driving that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" — George Carlin
• "Never call a man a fool; borrow from him' — Addison Mizner The Perfectly Good Cynic's Calendar by Ethel Watts Mumford Grant, Addison Mizner, Oliver Herford
• "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." — Gerald Uelmen who fed it to Johnnie Cochran. Also had a wonderful conversation about his losing the Fuhrman motion turning out well.
• "I'm not a potted plant." — Brendan Sullivan
• (summation) — Roy Black

  Ted Kennedy on the stand in the William Kennedy Smith trial. Prosecutor asks a question, Kennedy goes into a long answer, prosecutor objects, defense counsel opposes objection, and Kennedy keeps talking through the whole episode.

• (pulling it out of the fire) — Shawn Holley
• I can make a great movie out of your worst novel. — Howard Hawks to Ernest Hemingway American Film Tales, page 14
• "Very interesting. $50,000." — Lan Jen Chu. Power company's transmission towers were being destroyed by lightning strikes. Company tried better grounding systems and other fixes without success. The company described the problem to Chu, and he immediately saw the problem. Chu didn't want an hourly fee because he already knew the answer, but the company recoiled at the large flat fee. Since the solution was immediately obvious to Chu, the company did not hire him but rather went back to its engineers telling them that if Chu figured it out quickly by looking a few pictures, they should be able to figure it out with a little more time. But the engineers didn't figure it out, and the power company ultimately paid Chu. Making a better ground had made the problem worse; the solution was to remove a strut that made a large shorted loop.
• "Speak not to him, for God hath rendered him tasteless." B. Kliban possibly in Two Guys Fooling Around with the Moon (1982) ISBN 0-89480-198-8
• "Okay so maybe I was overly ambitious with my plan to post a weekly lust list. It’s not that there was any shortage of things I loved lately, more that there always seemed to be a shortage of something far more valuable: time. First I picked up a last minute freelance job on a yacht in the Bahamas (plenty of things to love there) and was too busy working to play on my computer. And then when I did have the luxury of time, I was working on Bahamas Wi-Fi which is comparable to trying to start a fire with a coconut. Pretty much pointless." — Kate Chastain, Lucky Charming.
• How to use bombers and torpedo planes to attack a squadron of battleships at Pearl Harbor.... "Use of Airplanes in Attack on Land Defenses", Journal of the Unted States Artillery, Date September 1920, Vol 53, Issue 3, pp 290–294 (reprinted from E. O. McDonnell, "A Story of the Part Played by Aviation with the British, German, and American Fleets", Flying, February 1920, pp. 33–35, 59); also page 264 noting Scientific American article 21 February 1920 about successes of the torpedo plane (page 181).
• Fleet Problem V 1925
• Fleet Problem XIII 1932 retake Hawaii in some refs
• "I am a damned sight smarter man than Grant. I know more about military history, strategy, and grand tactics than he does. I know more about supply, administration, and everything else than he does. I'll tell you where he beats me though and where he beats the world. He doesn't give a damn about what the enemy does out of his sight, but it scares me like hell. … I am more nervous than he is. I am more likely to change my orders or to countermarch my command than he is. He uses such information as he has according to his best judgment; he issues his orders and does his level best to carry them out without much reference to what is going on about him and, so far, experience seems to have fully justified him." — William Tecumseh Sherman. Comments to James H. Wilson (22 October 1864), as quoted in Under the Old Flag: Recollections of Military Operations in the War for the Union, the Spanish War, the Boxer Rebellion, etc Vol. 2 (1912) by James Harrison Wilson, p. 17.
• "It has been a damned serious business... Blücher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life." — Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, about the Battle of Waterloo to Thomas Creevey (18 June 1815). "Nice" used as "doubtful"; "a damned nice thing" sometimes quoted as "a damn close-run thing". T. Creevy, Reminiscences (28 July 1822); Creevey Papers (1903), Ch. X, p. 236.
• (find MacArthur's comment about raid in Mexico.)
• "It's not easy to wreck a nice beach." On a tee shirt given out at a 1983 speech recognition conference in Chatham, Massachusetts. John Sirica's house was close by.
• "I'll have what she's having." — Older Woman Customer in When Harry Met Sally... Mother of director Rob Reiner. See Billy Crystal's Reveals Secret. Nora Ephron, Crystal, and Meg Ryan thought up the scene, but Crystal explains that Rob Reiner amped it up: "And then Rob said, 'I want you to do it this way. Like this.' And he sat down opposite me — so now it looks like I'm on a date with him or Sebastian Cabot — he has an orgasm that King Kong would be jealous of."
• "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap." — Dolly Parton
• "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money." — Everett Dirksen
• "I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb… and I also know that I'm not blonde." — Dolly Parton
• "Oats n.f. [aten, Saxon.] A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people." — Samuel Johnson Dictionary of the English Language, J. & P. Knapton, London, 1755.
• "He who attempts to defend everything defends nothing." — Frederick the Great often attributed to Sun-Tzu
• "Smuggling." — Napoleon I heard this before....
• "The good that people do is oft in turd with their bones." — Alex K, 14-years old. A Lady Mondegreen during a discussion of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Alex blamed us for bringing up poop, and explained that owl poop has bones in it.
• Putting a star in her place. Julia Robert's young daughter started to realize her mom might be special, so she asked, "Mommy, are you famous?" Roberts replied, "Yes." The daughter followed up with, "Famous like Taylor Swift?" 6 April 2017.
• "Men who don’t like women taking up space are exactly why we need the Fearless Girl." — Bill de Blasio @NYCMayor 12 April 2017 responding to Arturo Di Modica's complaint about his Charging Bull statute.
• "Coram used the tried and true 'CPR method' to pop the top on this trash bin." — CBS News
• "It was absolutely marvelous working for Wolfgang Pauli. You could ask him anything. There was no worry that he would think a particular question was stupid, since he thought all questions were stupid." — Victor Weisskopf
• "He doesn't have sense enough to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel." — LBJ, Paul F. Boller, Jr., Presidential Anecdotes, page 319
• "Well, it's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in." — LBJ on J. Edgar Hoover, Boller, page 319
• "Son, they're all my helicopters." — LBJ
• "When you have a bunch of government-haters getting control of the government, it’s no surprise they don’t know how to make things operate effectively." — John Sparks Russell Berman, 27 November 2017, "The Red State Revolt Spreads to Oklahoma", The Atlantic
• "My mother had a crush on Jack Lemmon. Huge. It was the only time she showed good taste in men." — Carrie Fisher on Debbie Reynolds (Turner Classic Movies)
• Whereas it is moſt apparent, That the Multitude of Coffee-houſes of late Years ſet up and kept within this Kingdom, the Dominion of Wales, and the Town of Berwick upon Tweed, and the great reſort of Idle and Diſaffected perſons to them, have produced very evil and dangerous Effects, as well for that many Tradeſmen and others do therein miſpend much of their time, which might and probably would otherwiſe be employed in and about their lawful Callings and Affairs; but alſo, for that in ſuch Houſes, and by occaſion of the meetings of ſuch perſons therein, the divers falſe, malicious and ſcandalous Reports are deviſed and ſpread abroad, to the Defamation of His Majeſties Government, and to the Diſturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm. His Majeſty hath thought it fit and neceſſary, That the ſaid Coffee-houſes be (for the future) Put Down and Suppreſſed: And doth (with the Advice of His Privy Council) by this His Royal Proclamation, ſtrictly Charge and Command all manner of Perſons, That they, or any of them, do not preſume from and after the 10th day of January next enſuing, to keep any publick Coffee-houſe, or to utter or ſell by Retail, in his, her or their Houſe or Houſes (to be ſpent or conſumed within the ſame) any Coffee, Chocolet, Sherbett or Tea, as they will anſwer the contrary at their utmoſt Perils. And for the better accompliſhment of this His Majeſties Royal Pleaſure, His Majeſty doth hereby Will and Require the Juſtices of Peace within their ſeveral Counties, and the chief Magiſtrates in all Cities and Towns Corporate, That they do at the next reſpective General Seſſions of the Peace (to be holden within their ſeveral and reſpective Counties, Diviſions and Precincts) Recall and Make void all Licences at any time heretofore Granted for the Selling or Retailing of any Coffee, Chocolet, Sherbett, or Tea: And that they, or any of them, do not (for the future) Make or Grant any such Licence or Licences to any Perſon or Perſons whatſoever. And His Majeſty doth further hereby Declare, That if any Perſon or Perſons ſhall take upon them, him or her, after his, her or their Licence or Licences Recalled, or otherwiſe without Licence, to ſell by Retail (as aforeſaid) any of the Liquors aforeſaid, that then the Perſon or Perſons ſo offending, ſhall not only be proceeded againſt upon the Statute made in the Fifteenth Year of His Majeſties Reign (which gives the forfeiture of Five pounds for every Month, wherein he, ſhe or they ſhall offend therein) but ſhall (in caſe they perſevere to offend) receive the ſevereſt Puniſhments that may by Law be inflicted.

  Given at Our Court at Whitehall, this Twenty ninth day of December 1675. In the Seven and twentieth Year of Our Reign.

  — Charles II, https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/1055/page/2

  Note: The above text uses the Unicode character LATIN SMALL LETTER LONG S, &#17f;. Uppercasing that character produces the ordinary capital S. Searches are supposed to ignore case, so searching for "Majesty" might reasonably match "Majeſty". The search works in Chrome, but not Edge or Firefox. That also raises an issue with ligatures. Will a search for the ordinary "flint" also find the ligatured "flint"? Are ligatures only the result of painting, or should they be in text? Chrome matches the ligature; Edge and Firefox do not.

• "You are really nuts, you know it? One a these days they're gonna come over and just lock you up! You aren't playing with a full deck, Eunice. I think somebody blew your pilot light out." — Vicki Lawrence, Sorry, The Carol Burnett Show
• "Under pressure, you don't rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training. That's why we train so hard." — attributed to a Navy Seal. I first heard it in 1980. Variation of Archilochus, "We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training." See Quora.
• "So [the F-104] was an easy airplane to fly, but unforgiving in the sense that it had all — if the engine quit, and they often did, it had all the gliding characteristics of a set of car keys. So you could — I mean, we did have a high loss rate. But it was a wonderful airplane. I mean, it was the only airplane since the Wright Brothers to hold all of the important records, the absolute speed, time to climb into any altitude. And the absolute altitude record was over a hundred thousand feet, a hundred and three thousand or something like. Marvelous airplane. Just what every lieutenant needs is an airplane like that and a credit card so he can buy gas." — Merrill McPeak
• "You'll be interested and amused to know that you are now talking to the chief research scientist of the Metaplast Corporation, whose staff consisted of one bottle-washer!" — Richard Feynman to Frederic de Hoffmann, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman": Adventures of a Curious Character, 1985, Norton, p. 58.

  Feynman used psychology to guess the combination of de Hoffmann's filing cabinets at Los Alamos; the cabinets held all the atomic secrets. — "Los Alamos From Below", 1975, Feynman talk at UCSB, last tale.

  US 2214646, Walker, Bernard F., "Metal coated plastic material and method of producing the same", issued 1940-09-10, assigned to Metaplast Corporation

• Richard Feynman secretly emptied Edward Teller's locked desk drawer and then asked Teller to show him the contents of the locked drawer.
  Teller: "I'd be very glad to show it to you," puts the key in, opens it, looks in, and says, "if you hadn't already seen it yourself."
  Feynman: "The trouble with playing a trick on a highly intelligent man like Mr. Teller is the time it takes him to figure out from the moment he sees there's something wrong until he understands exactly what happened is too damned small to give you any pleasure." — Richard Feynman, "Los Alamos From Below", 1975, Feynman talk at UCSB, at 33:20.
• "To the Manx Shearwater that, taken from his nest off the coast of Wales and carried three thousand miles across the Atlantic to Boston, was back in twelve days". Anderson, E. W. (1966). Principles of Navigation. American Elsevier. p. front. LCCN 66-11436. OCLC 1712952.
• "Joan Marku said something about family honor being sacred in Kosovo, that it was some kind of old code of justice that went back centuries. I'm gonna look all that up on Wikipedia." Detective Lt. Michael Tao, scientific investigation specialist, in Living Proof, Part I, of The Closer.
• "Sincerity — if you can fake that, you've got it made." — George Burns
• "Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made." — George Burns
• "Time is God’s way of not letting everything happen all at once." — not Albert Einstein and not John Archibald Wheeler.
• "I was never a Girl Scout. I did eat their cookies." Abby Hornacek of Fox News.
• "When you're explaining, you're losing." Attorney Joshua Schiffer.
• "How do you not expect me to drive it like I stole it when I have to hot wire each time I start it" — Katelynn of Matt's Off Road Recovery.
• During an ESPN Monday Night Football broadcast of the Dallas Cowboys versus the Philadelphia Eagles, Dak Prescott calls the audible "Bob Ross". Announcer Brian Griese says, "Bob Ross likes to paint. I think it might be a draw."
• "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" Henry II of England remarking about Thomas Becket.
• "Maybe because you watched the wrong detective." Detective Alexandra Eames.
• "I only look like I'm not paying attention to you." Detective Alexandra Eames. (Semi-professional hit man.)
• "I'm so stupid. Explain it to me again." Nicole Bonnet — in How to Steal a Million.
• "That's my story, and I'm sticking to it." Lots of misguided information about the origin. Some claim that Wrong Way Corrigan said it for his 17 July 1938 flight to Ireland. Corrigan published the book That's my Story (E. P. Dutton) in 1938 but it is not clear the book has "stickin' to it". However, the 1935 Fred Astaire—Ginger Rogers screwball comedy Top Hat has the essential phrase. Madge Hardwick says, "If that's your story, Horace, you stick to it."

  From Top Hat DVD, chapter 16

  Madge Hardwick (Helen Broderick)

  Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton)

  Jerry Travers (Fred Astaire)

  Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers)

  The setup: Horace had a fling in Paris, but his wife Madge does not know about that. Bachelor Jerry is chasing Dale, but Dale mistakenly believes Jerry is Madge's husband Horace. Dale has told Madge that Horace is chasing her. Madge is surprised that Horace has the energy/skill to chase Dale, but she believes Horace is chasing Dale. Horace and Jerry have just arrived and meet Madge.

  M: Horace

  H: How do you do? Madge, darling.

  M: My, your passion frightens me. Been practicing?

  H: Yes. Well, scarcely. No. Madge, what do you think has happened to me?

  M: I know. You got your first long trousers.

  H: Madge, please.
  There's something down here that I have to investigate...
  and Jerry thinks that I...
  Maybe I better tell it anonymously.

  M: You know, it sounds as if you were about to confess something, Horace.

  H: Does it? What would I have to confess?

  M: You really want to tell me about Dale Tremont, don't you?

  H: Yes, Yes, but then again, no.
  You see, as a matter of fact, I haven't even met her yet.

  M: Oh, you haven't met her?

  H: No.

  M: Well, if that's your story, Horace, you stick to it.
  I... I suppose you weren't even in the park, either.

  H: The park, my dear girl, it happened in the zoo. What? The zoo.... Yes. The zoo was in the park. How did you know I was there?

  M: Oh, a little bird told me.

  H: The stork? I think, after the trip, I better clean up a bit.

  M: Of course, I understand just how you feel.

  • Happy: "That's the story, and I'm stickin' to it." The Las Vegas Story. 1952.
• "Common sense is not so common." François-Marie Arouet aka Voltaire.^[1]
• "There even are places where English completely disappears; in America they haven't used it for years." Professor Henry Higgins, My Fair Lady

• David Baltimore on cancer; clear disinterest in anecdotal evidence.
• Paul MacCready on human-powered aircraft and Gossamer Condor; also great article in CalTech alumni magazine on Sunraycer and winning the World Solar Challenge
  • MacCready, Paul B. (Winter 1988). "Sunraycer Odyssey: Winning the Solar-Powered Car Race across Australia" (PDF). Engineering & Science. California Institute of Technology.
• IBM speaker about fast transaction processing
• Ellen Hildreth on vision
• several others...
• Random number generators:

  John von Neumann only trusted true random number generators.

  Donald Knuth gave a wonderful talk about his attempt to make a good psuedo random number generator – an attempt that quickly found a fixed point so the generator just emitted the same number at each call.

  Manuel Blum gave an hour-long one-slide lecture that included how to make a biased random number generator less biased.

• Popular lectures

  Christopher Bishop, The Royal Institution, Explosive Science, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFQdcKJUijQ